


episode zero, characters background

by homoeroticsubtextinspace



Series: Karnaca [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Destiny, F/F, Game: Destiny: Rise of Iron DLC, Gay, Guardians - Freeform, IN SPACE!, Multi, Post-Game: Destiny 2, Science Fiction, Technology, The Red War (Destiny), everyone is Lgbt don't even ask, spaceship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26284435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homoeroticsubtextinspace/pseuds/homoeroticsubtextinspace
Summary: very quick presentation of the three main characters (three guardians) and rundown of their life until episode 1Notes are at the End , separated in three categories: destiny specific words and explanations, foreign vocabulary, and acronyms. (there was too much for the note box i guess )I also draw them , so if you want to see them , here is the specific link: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/karnacacrew ( the blog is entirely dedicated to this story)
Relationships: Ana Bray/Female Guardian (Destiny)
Series: Karnaca [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909798
Kudos: 1





	episode zero, characters background

Akai

Awoken woman  
Hunter, mostly void based (can also control arc)  
She named herself Akai on her second trip to the cosmodrome .  
Not on the first since she was freshly risen and completely overrun by panic and survival instincts.  
Back at the tower she noticed everyone had names , so she asked her ghost what hers was, and he said “you'll have to either discover it or choose one, I'm sorry i can't bring you back with your memories of before".  
Then when they were looking for the warp drive, she saw a rusty sign with Акай фгуп цэнки (Akai fgup tsenki , the name of a research center in the cosmodrome) written on it, so she decided it sounded cool and that it would be her name until she finds her old one.  
She thinks a lot about her life before and tries to gather as much as she can about it, so far the only thing she managed to discover is that she had light cybernetic implants , probably a universal translator because there are distinctive marking on some of her cranial bones and the date of her first death (from the original scan from her ghost) which indicates the very beginning of the collapse.  
She was very enthusiastic to learn about the awoken, and very disappointed when she actually met them, except for Petra, whom has always been courteous if not friendly (and also a fan of knives, what do you know, it brings people together)  
Mostly a loner, she enjoys letting her ghost pilot her jumpship in the high atmosphere so she can lie on the roof at very low speed to watch the stars.  
She's an expert marksman, partial to scout rifles and snipers, yet she always carry a sword because she thinks it looks super cool.  
She is super annoyed by Cayde-6 but respects his experience.  
Her life changed drastically when she met Failsafe and Ana Bray, two “relics" of the golden age.  
She really get along well with Failsafe, and she regularly scours her huge databanks looking for any clue on her past. As for Ana, Akai is 100% in love with her, but waaaay to shy to say anything.  
What she carries to the field  
-Sunshot / Roderic -C  
-Arsenic bite / Polaris lance  
-Sleeper simulant / Steel sibyl z14  
-at least half a dozen knives  
She is an absolute fan of the precursor vex chrome and mad monk shaders and puts all of her stuff to these colours.

She calls her ghost Oganok , and he pretends he doesn't know it means little light in russian 

Her best friend is the Titan Rosetta , they met during the second siva crisis , and at this point they didn't see each other much , although they “texted" a lot via ghost (I guess there is a kind of communication system between ghosts and guardians)  
They grew even closer when they formed a fireteam.  
The third member of their fireteam is the warlock Deidra, she shares a particular connection with her even though she doesn't speak much. She loves hearing her sing and play instruments, Deidra even began to teach Akai to play drums.  
During a recon mission on Europa a fallen vandal saved her life by pushing her out the opening of a crevice, she never knew why, but this fallen had been following her movement for the past three days, since she arrived on the moon.  
The vandal fell in the crevice , so she never had an answer.  
Since then She is very interested in their culture and tries to learn as much as she can about them .  
Before she engages Eliksni , she lets out on all frequencies a warning and a surrender demand . She likes Variks very much and believes he could lead the Eliksny into a new era of peace and collaboration with humanity.

\----‐-------------

Rosetta  
Human woman  
A striker in d1 and a sentinel now  
She was named Rosetta by a cryptarch because of all the different sentences she has tattooed on the body , all of them in different languages .She was reborn with these tattoos already, they cover most of her back, arms, legs and torso.  
Most of the sentences are from books or vids, and it can range from hamlet to sun tzu , with some chemical and mathematical formulas in between . She hasn't deciphered all of them yet. Several of them appears to be written in Eliksni, but in its ancient form, so Variks can't read it well.  
In d1 she wore black warpaint on her face, but a few months before the red war, she saved a family of refugees outside old Brasilia and they all had white facial markings, she thought it looked cool so she switched her warpaint to white.  
She likes kids very much and always carry half a dozen on her shoulder when she strolls through the city. Even though her body looks in her 30’s her hair are white, and since she is now a guardian, the city's doctors can't get any coherent reading on her physiology.  
She is HUGE , towering at 2m05 ,yet she focused her training on mobility, so she moves rather fast for her stature. On a memorable strike on mars she tackled a colossus at full speed, snapping his neck just from the impact.  
She was reborn deaf, but her ghost patches intels and comms directly through their telepathic link. This way she can talk too, but prefers not too as it feels weird not hearing herself directly  
What she brings to the field:  
-Nameless midnight / Sturm  
-Graviton lance /Drang  
-Crown splitter sword  
-A small sketchbook  
-Snacks  
She also has a sleeper simulant in case things go really bad.

She nicknamed her graviton lance Champollion as a running gag about her name.  
She's a huge fan of the crucible, mostly rumble, and idolizes lord Shaxx .  
One of the thing she desires the most after the safety of her people is a cloak like Saladin's,  
She likes huge swords that are almost impossible to lift for normal humans and is regularly seen forging swords twice as big as her and infusing them with her light. Her workshop was just outside the tower in the city's outskirts, it was destroyed during the red war. All of her weapons are engraved with song lyrics or quotes she likes., for example on the blade of her crown splitter these words are etched “After time adrift among open stars, among tides of light and to shoals of dust, I will return to where I began." A sentence her ghost got from a golden age computer.  
She never leaves her sketchbook where she compiled tons of ideas for new weapons and sketches of her enemies. Because of this she is well known for taking the time to draw stuff in the middle of a battle, her ghost had to revive her more than once because she wanted a “live “ vex or cabal subject.  
She met her best friend Akai at Felwinter peak at the beginning of the second Siva crisis, they did the whole mission together, and have stayed in contact since. She sometimes helps Akai on her quest for identity and answers regardless of Zavala's strict orders against digging into the past.  
Her ghost is named Artemis, her favourite shell : skyline flipside , which makes her looks like a small disco ball.  
Artemis keep a count of all the enemies she has defeated and never misses an opportunity to brag about her guardian  
When she is out of ammo she enters a punching frenzy. It is best to leave her some space when it happens.  
She give great hugs and half the city knows that.  
After the events of the red war she developed a profound hatred of the cabal and the hive (a lot of her friends were killed by both. Namely an awoken teenager she was training in the ways of the sword.  
Before the events of the homecoming mission she had no connection to either void or solar light, the only one she could conjure was Arc, but it changed after she regained her light from the shard, now her connection to arc light is completely severed, and she gained the ability to switch between solar and void At will.  
She once fell asleep on her sparrow and fell down a ravine on Nessus ,after being revived, it took her 6 hours to climb back up, Artemis reminds her of it every time she yawns during a task.  
The third member of their fireteam is the warlock Deidra ,even though she is not very present in the city lately. She likes her usage of her spear, sorrow and her skills as a warrior are most useful to the team.

‐------------------

Deidra

Warlock  
Human woman  
(I haven't played destiny 1 with her so all of her backstory  
Previous to the red war is mine to create)  
Her ghost found her in the ruins of London about 200 years before the taken wars . London being just a field of ruins with no enemies she explored the city for weeks , her ghost marveling at their newfound connection, wanting to show his guardian all it had explored to find her. They had plenty of time to talk about the world and what to expect from humanity and its enemies .

The first they encountered were the house of devils,(fallen) the ones who burned London during the collapse. They battled for several days, bringing the warlock and her ghost closer and closer to the center of the city. At this point she only fights with her light abilities, or fallen weapons scavenged from her kills. The fight brings her to the ruins of the British museum, where she finds an old saxon spear, her ghost fixes it with the materials around and with it she is able to finally stand her ground.

After destroying the remaining pockets of devils scattered in the ruins, her ghost which she now calls Blacksmith tells her it is time to join the city. To do so will take them 2 years, mostly by foot and with a small sailboat they repaired to get to the mainland.  
The first humans they met were a small camp of fishers hunters (not guardians) Off the coast of Denmark. Blacksmith spent a lot of effort persuading them to come with them to the last city, in vain.

During her travels with nomads and refugees, she requested the humans to name her, because she didn't like being called guardian all the time. She received the name Deidra , for she seems to carry her sorrow with her in her travels. Around the campfires she discovered herself a real talent for singing . To the pleasure of those she shared the road with. By this time she had never met another guardian, but had spent a lot of time with ordinary humans, which explains why in battle she always retreat before dying, because she tends to forget that she's immortal. By the words uttered by the civilians she traveled along, she understood that the guardians were not very liked or understood among the people,most of them had heard scary stories and are mostly colporting legends and they paint guardians are frightening monsters with unimaginable powers , and the civilians are happy they are on their side but still not very eager to actually meet one.

Of course she would feel weird about meeting other guardians. It didn't help that the first she met were in a crucible match at twilight gap, she stumbled in the arena unknowingly and people started shooting at her, she retaliated, shutting down 4 guardians with her spear before Shaxx realized she wasn't part of the match and stopped it.  
She was brought to the tower to meet the vanguard , whom she didn’t like very much, probably out of the superstitions she carried from the nomadic tribes.  
It took her 3 years to accept going on strike or patrol with other guardians. And most of the time she still does it alone.  
She took a house near the great market of the city, where she is closer to the people. At one point she considered getting married to a human she met there but after 15 years of life together it became clear that dating a mortal would just be cruel. She discovered during this time that guardians are all sterile, this was a huge blow for her. After the death of her mate she became lonelier than ever, shutting herself down, and took a leave of absence from the vanguard, to go back to london and retrace her steps from there.  
In Scotland she found a pre-golden age personal device, blacksmith repaired it, it was a music player.  
Full of songs and music videos. There she discovered a singer who looked exactly like her, even had the same voice. She asked blacksmith to run a face recognition between the picture and her face and it gave 99.99% correspondence.  
This discovery gave her a new drive, she was going to find out who she was before.

She flew to the Ishtar archives on Venus to see if any more info on that singer could be found, like her actual name or where she was buried. There she had her answer ,Blacksmith had risen her at the exact spot specified where she was buried.  
So it was true then she previously was a human named Florence welsh, and lived a happy life at the very beginning of the golden age. Because of her successful career in music in the band florence + the machine the file was rather extensive on her life ,including the fact that she had children. This was the beginning of a new era for her. She was going to search for her descendants, if they were still alive . For the 100 years before the red war she discreetly scanned everyone she met with her ghost to find similar genetic markers. She had no luck so far, but she believes one day she will.

Ability wise she is one of the rare guardians able to use all 3 types of light without problem.  
She likes to sing the songs of her past life and wrote new ones , inspired by her own experience.  
She met Akai on one of her trips of remembrance through the wilds. She was singing thinking she was alone and when she finished her song, an arrow landed 4meters from her with a written note : “can you continue singing? “  
This very cavalier way to communicate charmed Deidra. And Oganok ( Akai's ghost)came to her to apologize for her guardians' behaviour (you don't shoot arrows at people to communicate, it's so uncivilized.)  
Akai was still a very young guardian at the moment. They formed a kind of mentor/student bond rather easily, as Akai had a similar personality (mostly loner, doesn't trust other guardians. )  
Akai introduced her to her friend Rosetta a short time after, and they immediately clicked, since then they form a very efficient fireteam, counterbalancing each other's weaknesses and strengths. Deidra also liked Rosetta as a person, and said multiple times she is the best listener she has ever met .  
She taught herself sign language to understand what Rosetta says when she doesn't speak via her ghost.  
Other guardians who fought alongside their fireteam said it was a terrifying experience, as the three of them didn't speak a word of the mission yet had perfect group cohesion and synchronisation.  
Their fireteam is named STATIC

What she brings to the field:  
Her spear (named Sorrow)  
Ornamented prometheus lens  
BrayTech RWP mk II  
The queenbreaker/ eternity's edge  
Her music player device

Blacksmith choice of shell : star map shell

NOTES 

DESTINY SPECIFIC TERMS:

The Traveler: sort of planet shaped deity (smaller than Pluto), hovering silently over the last city on Earth. It uplifted Humanity with technologies in the early/mid 21st century. Supposedly it is ageless, traveling among the stars uplifting species.

-the Last City : technically “the last safe city on earth” a gigantic city built under the Traveler in the mountains of Chile , located near the modern town of Uspallata. It is not however the only settlement. Only a third of humanity lives here

-the collapse: "the end of the world" a general collapse of all infrastructure and countries in the 2320 due to an overwhelming alien invasion . Almost all intel on the actual events is lost.

-Guardian : warriors resurrected from dead bodies by a ghost to wield the light (energy) as a weapon to defend Earth and humanity. They have no memories of their previous life, only their bodies.(the protagonists of the game)

-Ghost: little AI in the form of a little star , no bigger than a grapefruit, they were created by the Traveler before it went into silence, they are tasked with finding "their" guardian and bring them back to life.

-Titan : subclass of Guardian, they usually are big and smart, their main asset is raw power and resilience. They wield specific powers that no other classes can use 

-Hunter :subclass of Guardian , they usually are small and agile, their main asset is speed and marksmanship. They wield specific powers that no other classes can use (like double jump, they can take a second jump mid air to reach higher)

-Warlock: subclass of guardians: they usually are mysterious and focused on research. Their main asset is versatility and understanding of the Light . They wield specific powers that no other classes can use

-Engram: new state of matter, where mass disappears into information only. One of the major discoveries of the golden age.

-Arc/Solar/Void : the three types of energy the Light turns into , the first one manifests itself as electricity, the second fire and the third as dimensional flux

-Awoken: Awoken are standoffish and resemble baseline humans, with the notable exception of having pale blue, purple, green, or gray skin. They also have luminescent eyes with glowing irises. Beyond physical appearances, the Awoken seem to possess powers and abilities beyond their human ancestors. This is a side effect of them being within Earth's universe-within the Distributary (their birth dimension), the Awoken do not have paracausal abilities, but are so intertwined with the fabric of its existence that they do not age past a certain point.

-RFBA (РФБА in Russian) the name of the Russian space administration in the golden age, the logo is visible in a great number of place in the game, along with some space colonisation propaganda decrepit murals . The soviet poster though is a real one from the 70’s, with a real slogan. 

-Warmind : a network of highly powerful AI (or a single AI controlling it all, it is unclear) controlling the defenses of the solar system.

-RASPUTIN : a warmind, a highly specialized and powerful artificial intelligence designed to protect Humanity from potential outside threats . it’s real motives are unknown.

-EXO: robotic body allegedly designed as a soldier , made to house a human mind.

-Sparrow: basically a hover-motorcycle. One person vehicle use by guardians on the field.

-Braytech : Clovis Bray technologies and Clovis Bray exosciences, the leading edge of technological advancement during the golden age. They created the EXO’s and the Warminds

-The vanguard : Elite guardians (three of them, one of each class) who coordinate the last city’s defenses, organize assaults on enemy strongholds and assassinations of their leaders, and mentor newly-risen Guardians. Some Guardians work directly for the Vanguard as scouts, investigating potential threats to the City far afield.

-Zavala : titan member of the vanguard, a good man, yet vehemently opposed to the idea of guardians digging into their own past.

-Kinderguardians: how freshly risen guardians are called by everyone else.

-Frame: a frame is a robotic body , not made to look like a human (although it is of humanoid structure -2 arms two legs, a head in the middle of shoulders) most frames do not have a personality programmed into them, some do.

-Skiff: Eliksni dropship, containing from 3 to 10 soldiers. 

The five alien species of the collapse: 

-Eliksni (fallen) :one of the five Alien species who came to the Sol system during/after the collapse. they are not a unified specie, their people are separated in great houses, often warring with each others  
they have four arms and two legs, as well as four eyes. Their story is very similar to humanity.

-The Hive: The Hive are a race of insectoid aliens that worship and serve the Darkness.They also follow the teachings of the Deep, specifically a principle known as The Sword Logic.(the strong devours the weak…) they house a race of worms in their bodies , whom they revere as gods.

-the cabal: The Cabal are a warmongering race of giant bipedal humanoids with a heavy-set, rhinoceros-like appearance. Their ever expanding Empire spreads through organization, efficiency, and corruption.

-Vex: The Vex have been described as a "hyperintelligent time-spanning thought-mesh", a collective mind composed of countless component intelligences distributed across time and space. The mobile Vex machines encountered by Guardians are merely containers for these intelligences, which carry mind cores filled with milky radiolarian fluid - hypothesized to be the only remnant of their distant biological origin

-the Taken: not a species per se, they are a state of being, The Taken are Darkness-corrupted entities originating from multiple species warped into another dimension called and altered to serve their given purpose. Once used by Oryx, The taken king (now dead) as his personal army, they have more recently been utilized by other powerful Darkness-aligned entities. They have no will of their own. 

Astronomy terms:

Enceladus: The sixth-largest moon of Saturn. It is about 500 kilometres in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System

Titan (moon) :Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest natural satellite in the Solar System. It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere.in the Destiny universe it was settled by humans in huge floating biospheres called Arcologies .

AU: astronomical unit, roughly 150 million kilometers (the average distance between the Earth and the Sun)

Nessus: unstable centaur in a transneptunian orbit, sometime closer than Pluto, sometimes much farther away. it's a destination in the game ( and a real celestial body in our solar system)

Acronyms and initialism:

ETA: estimated time of arrival 

HUD: head’s up display, in this case mounted inside the helmet.

EVA: extravehicular activity, basically a space walk to repair something in space or to reach another location through space.

FOREIGN VOCABULARY

Since every guardian/characters are of different origins, they all have a “mother tongue” they sometime revert to when speaking, together they all speak Quechua or English (and i write it in English because i do not speak Quechua) it’s specified in skills in the crew manifest but here it goes, in details:

Akai’s natural language is Russian, she uses it for endearing terms an general expressions (which I’m writing in latin characters because i want you to hear it) It is also Numiri’s and Torres’s natural languages

Russian :

Mertsat: “sparkle/twinkle” affectionate russian word Akai use to call her ghost.

Bolje: “god/lord” while not religious, an expression used by Akai when in disbelief.

Dorogaya moya: my dear in russian

Quechua:

Pachakawri Rumi : meteorite


End file.
